Corporations that maintain a fleet of numerous vehicles are often faced with the challenging task of tracking and managing the fleet. In one example, the fleet may have test vehicles that are used for research and testing. Alternatively, the fleet may include work or service trucks as well.
Some of the challenges that a fleet operator or administrator may face include management of vehicle keys, the location of specific vehicles or operators, and the ability to limit functionality of in-vehicle systems based on an operator's driving history. Specifically, managing several sets of keys for a vehicle, or managing a single set of keys between multiple drivers may be time consuming and complicated. The fleet administrator may also need to have the resources to locate a specific vehicle or a driver. Moreover, a fleet administrator may need to be able to limit functionality based on the driving history. For example, a fleet administrator may need to limit certain in-vehicle functions for an inexperienced driver such as, for example, radio volume, or the ability to receive mobile telephone calls using a hands-free system.
The drivers who operate the fleet vehicles may also have issues as well. For example, every time a driver switches to another vehicle, certain user defined settings such as, for example, seat position, radio presets, and a list of contacts typically need to be modified. Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a fleet management system that tracks and manages fleet vehicles more efficiently when compared to the fleet management systems that are currently available.